October 13, 2007

Psychology faculties at three colleges–Smith, Guilford and Earlham–have voted to reject the use of psychology in situations that are unethical, including for purposes of national security and interrogation.

The noteworthy thing about this is that they are implicitly criticizing their own organization the APA for not going far enough.

Meanwhile, anthropologists have gone far further, not only condemning the use of anthropological knowledge in physical and psychological torture but have created a committee to study the ethical issues of working with national security agencies.

To the best of my knowledge the AAG has never constituted similar committees (nor any on the ethical use of geographical knowledge such as census data in general).

I have in the past contacted them about at least issuing statements on important issues of the day but they have never replied despite the fact that I have been a member off and on since the 1980s and continually since 1994 when I returned to to the USA.

It’s pretty clear that the AAG has a deep aversion to what it sees as “political” issues, or in other words to being relevant.